During the 15th to 17th centuries, Renaissance Europe faced an enormous change in the way education was seen and valued. Initially people thought that education was meant for philosophy and critical thinking, but overtime it lost its value and goals. Education ended up being seen as entertainment since students were unable to successfully apply their thinking skills. As education lost its importance Europeans wanted more people in the workforce than philosophers because of the growing industries.
Following the events of the bubonic plague, Renaissance education took a turn into philosophical thinking techniques as a way to enlighten the mind. Pope Piccolomini believed that people needed to “distinguish the true and the just from the base and degrading”(doc 1). As a humanist who became pope, he needed to separate his religious thinking from his more secularized way of emphasizing the value of human beings. Education was important to determine justice and study ancient writing to help us understand the past, present, and future. Studying classical literature was needed in order to provide resilience after the black plague and inform the lower class of the importance of education. Piccolomini believed that once you’ve touched upon basic education and moved on to complex learning you've begun the process of the “enlightenment …show more content…
people of the royal level believed that education was for the purpose of social entertainment rather than for scholarly purposes. To Baldassare Castiglione education was “pleasant entertainment with the ladies”(doc 2) or to have for social events . Castiglione's beliefs led to some people, like Michael de Montaigne, to believe that the goals of the educational system were failing. Montaigne believed the aim was to make students “not good and wise, but learned; and it has succeeded” (doc 5) because of its large focus on Greek and Latin rather than focusing on